MUSIC REVIEW : Jerry Hadley Sings a Bemusing Recital

Jerry Hadley, the celebrated lyric tenor who gave his first Southern California recital Wednesday night at Ambassador Auditorium, commands an extraordinary talent.

His voice is compellingly sweet and pure, fresh and bright. He uses it with canny finesse.

He can rise to ringing forte climaxes. He also can file the sound down to a pianissimo point that shimmers in the mist.

He focuses generous, daring head tones when mood, tradition and ascending lines permit. He offers object lessons in sensuous legato phrasing.

He cares about the words, and articulates them cleanly in at least five languages. He understands the value of characterization, respects distinctions of style.

He can sing with agility that need not preclude accuracy. When the spirit moves him, he can even muster a decent trill--an achievement beyond at least two of the three better-paid and better-publicized tenors in the big-circus sweepstakes.

On the brink of his 41st birthday, he looks just as young, fit and slender as he sounds. He cuts a convincingly romantic figure on the stage. He exudes innocent charm.

So why wasn’t his debut in Pasadena more satisfying?

Much of the problem must be blamed on his accompanist. The tenor from Princeton, Ill., may have very good reasons for choosing to appear with his wife, Cheryll Drake Hadley, at the piano. Unfortunately, artistic equality is not one of them.

Mrs. Hadley never provided the decisive impetus the soloist, and the music, deserved. Much of her playing was flabby in rhythm, mushy in execution, fuzzy in definition. One missed the intimate give and take, the informed alternation of leadership that defines successful partnerships. One missed the echoing exchange of subtle nuances, and of not-so-subtle nuances.

Compounding the misfortune, the tenor chose a rambling little-bit-of-this-and-a-little-bit-of-that program that vacillated between high art and high show-biz, that lacked a central focus and fell short of climaxes. Jessye Norman still may be able to bring the house down at the end of an evening with “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” but the gospel glitz doesn’t work so well for Hadley.

Then there was the chat syndrome. During the first half of the evening, our hero adhered to conventional stand-and-sing decorum. During the second, he became something of a hokey-folky raconteur with an irritating penchant for hyperbole. One was pleased that he finally asked the eager, non-capacity audience not to clap at every Luftpause , less pleased that he felt the need to recount the synopsis of “Yevgeny Onegin,” which was printed in the program.

Under the circumstances, one had to be grateful for isolated vocal favors: the elegance of “Un’ aura amorosa” from Mozart’s “Cosi fan Tutte,” the introspective pathos of Liszt’s Petrarch sonnets, the exquisite passion of four Rachmaninoff miniatures, the aching nostalgia of Lenski’s aria. One could admire the correctness if not the tautness of three Strauss Lieder, the fervor if not the scrambled scales of Mozart’s “Il mio tesoro.”

Hadley brought operatic largess to three Broadway tunes by Leonard Bernstein. Muscular force marked Copland’s “At the River.” Banality beckoned in “Amazing Grace” and the artificial spiritual.

One worried here and there about high notes pushed sharp, and about low notes edged with a rasp. In context, one didn’t worry much.

The motley-encore marathon included a supremely sentimentalized “Una furtiva lagrima,” “Danny Boy,” Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday” and Cardillo’s “Cor ‘ngrato.” To send ‘em home happy, Hadley capped the show with Noel Coward’s “Come to the Wild, Wild Weather.”